Omega Wall

The Omega Wall presented an opportunity for SOM to pursue a new design challenge in creating an iconographic religious image which would be suitable for the first cathedral built in 21st century.

The Omega Wall, flanked on either side by the Organ.

The image of Christ on the Omega Wall is based on a sculpture found in Chartres Cathedral in France.

The image is digitized and converted to a set of grayscale values which are in turn converted to circles of different size.

When mapping the image on the surface of the Omega Wall, great care is taken with the placement of the face. Three panels are selected for further research and testing.

An enlarged view of the face panels.

The image is projected onto a curved surface so, it is necessary to correct for distortion.

I used the laser cutter to create a quick mock-up in-house.

Testing the fabricator's mock-up on-site. An unforeseen complication: the sunny day was not conducive to viewing as the image would not be apparent in direct light.

A sunny day makes the image difficult to see.

Using plastic to mimic the translucent glass that will be installed behind the Omega Wall. Though the shadow of the face appears against the plastic, the desired effect is still not apparent on the front of the panels.

A bright idea: One of the construction crew suggests using the tower crane to lift a rubbish bin to cast a shadow over the panels.

One crew member holds the rubbish bin in place during the viewing.

The face appears.

Installation of the curtain wall behind the Omega Wall.

Installation. The missing panel near Jesus' feet was fabricated backwards so had to be redone.

Panels waiting for installation.

Installation is complete.

The Bishop of the diocese chose and provided an image of Christ for the team to use: a photograph of a sculpture at Chartres Cathedral in France. The image was then reformatted through several processes to bring the Omega Wall to realization. First, minor corrections and enhancements to the image itself were necessary to digitally "repair" the figure, as there was some damage to the original sculpture. The image was then converted to data points, which assigned value to each pixel and converted them again to corresponding sizes of circles. The circles were then mapped to a surface model of the Omega Wall, corrected for distortion, then laser cut and assembled on site.

At the time, this kind of installation was relatively untested - so there were exhaustive trials and mockups at each stage of the process. I worked intensively with SOM's internal Graphics department and an Associate in the New York office with a specialized expertise in computational design to coordinate the documentation and mockups needed to bring this project forward.